The City of Bakersfield has been working with the Bakersfield Police Department on a gun violence reduction strategy. The strategy was implemented last year, but gun violence continues to be a concern in the community, impacting not just the victims, but their families and loved ones as well. 23ABC's Breanna Polk has the story.
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00:00 Gun violence continues to be a concern here in our community. So much so the
00:04 city of Bakersfield has been working with the police department on a gun
00:08 violence reduction strategy that was implemented last year. 23 abc's Briana
00:13 Polk brings us an update on the initiative and sat down with a family
00:16 member of a gun violence victim to get her thoughts about the strategy. Brother
00:21 was very well known. Um he was very respected for something like that to
00:26 happen. Like he was being robbed. You know what I mean? So it's like he
00:30 didn't go out looking for trouble. It just kind of happened. Jessica Bejarano
00:34 is a sister of Fernando Bustamante. Her brother was shot to death last year.
00:39 That tragedy still haunting his family to this day. She says she believes the
00:44 issue of gun violence in our community is not necessarily targeted at a
00:48 specific group of people as she believes the accessibility of weapons is
00:52 far too easy. The gun issue is a big issue. If they can stop that both
00:57 legally and illegally, that'd be great. There'll be less lives taken because
01:02 it's hard. So I'm not just saying that just because of my brother, like my
01:08 friend got shot, he was young. So they get younger and younger like every
01:12 year. According to the city of Bakersfield in 2020 there were a total
01:17 of 44 homicides. City manager christian Clegg says some of the components of
01:21 the strategy include community partner based approaches, intervention
01:25 strategies and support for victims. There are things that the city can't do
01:30 as well as many of our community partners. And so we employ community
01:34 based organization has trusted messengers to go out into the
01:38 community and make contact with individuals who are at very high risk
01:41 of gun violence and try and talk to them and offer them solutions, offer
01:46 them roads and pathways out of lifestyles of violence and offer them
01:51 services to help them in those pathways. The city says the strategy is funded by
01:55 the California violence intervention program and is supplemented by
01:59 resources from the public safety and vital services measure which allows
02:04 city and community leaders to analyze the dynamics of violence. Considering
02:08 the city's efforts, but her honor believes more needs to be done. That's
02:12 the part that they really need to take care of that part because it's not the
02:16 guns that are killing people, it's us, the people like they come across that
02:21 they want it, they can go get it. That's my opinion in Bakersfield Brianna Polk
02:25 23 bc News connecting you